The Advantages & Disadvantages Of Using the HDI For Comparison
Advantages |
Disadvantages |
- It is a composite indicator which provides a more useful comparison metric than single indicators do
- It incorporates three of the most important metrics for households i.e. health, education & income
- It is widely used all over the world which provides an opportunity for meaningful comparisons
- It provides a goal for governments to use when developing their policies e.g. it may help identify that the education levels are holding back improvements to the HDI & government policy can target that
- It provides citizens with an understanding of how their quality of life compares to other countries
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- It does not measure the inequality that exists as it uses the mean GNI/capita
- It does not measure or compare the levels of absolute & relative poverty that exist
- For many countries it does not provide useful short-term information as gathering the data required for the calculation is difficult. This means the data often lags reality by several years
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